The Art of Failure
by adele4
Summary: Jounouchi and Rishid ponder over their relationships with rivals and brothers.


_**Notes**__: Established Jounouchi/Rishid (and hints at (one sided?) Jounouchi/Kaiba and Rishid/Malik, if you __want__ to see it as such). Romance isn't the main focus though: I just found that those two work well together while drabbling them._

_Set at a not more clearly defined time after Battle City; the Ishtars are all in Domino City._

_The German text in-between works as break lines; I put a translation of it at the bottom._

_**Dislcaimer**__: Don't own Yu-Gi-Oh, don't own the characters, no copyright infringement intended, no money made with this._

* * *

The Art of Failure

You're strong, Rishid tells him earnestly.

It works; it makes him feel better, because he knows that Rishid means it. He's not so sure about it when Yugi says it. It's not that Yugi is lying – but Yugi always sees the good in people, even when they're clearly arrogant jerks like Kaiba or psychotic manipulators like Malik, and while Jounouchi finds this impressive, it also makes him think that Yugi can't be entirely trusted on that department. Because if he's as strong as Kaiba or Malik are good – then he's doomed.

Honda, who's his best and oldest buddy and doesn't have Yugi's way of seeing, wouldn't tell him he's strong, even if he thinks so: he'd just tell him to stop worrying about that stuff and shut up. The implication is there that Honda does believe he is strong _enough_, whatever that means exactly, but sometimes, it's nice and uplifting to be told about it.

Especially when you've just been dealt another crushing defeat by Seto Kaiba.

When Rishid says it, he does believe it, despite of what just happened; maybe it's because he has said so long before they became friends and lovers, when Jounouchi hated him (but it already wasn't _him_ he hated, it was just the one he believed to be Malik), and when he, Rishid, had to at least see him as an opponent.

It's the sort of respect he remembers – and secretly missed – from his time in the gang, only not filled with bitterness, because back then, he got respect for being able to beat up others, and hide his emotions: but Rishid recognised the things that _count_, those of which he is most proud of. His ability not to give up in a duel; his devotion to Shizuka. The same things he can himself respect the most in the other one as well.

Though sometimes, he's not sure what to think of his loyalty to Malik. He's wondered if he would stand by Shizuka if she went crazy and killed people and tried to take over the world. But the idea is too absurd to be considered: it wouldn't be Shizuka!

So, Rishid answers to that, would you stand by her if she decided to date Otogi?

Jounouchi's eyes almost pop out at that: date Otogi? After a moment of thought, he decides: he'd just kill Otogi!

Here you go, Rishid says, and goes back to washing the dishes. He does most of the housework, because Jounouchi sucks at it, and he likes doing it.

Jounouchi fails to see what that's supposed to mean. All right. So maybe he can sort of guess. Fine, so if Shizuka really wanted to date Otogi –

The thought makes him shudder, so he decides to think of something else.

Something else, like Kaiba.

It's not that he hates _Kaiba_: he just hates people like him, whose world seems to remain straight and clear through all fissures, and who can keep going without anyone calling them on it, without stopping to think and re-shape. And it's not that he _hates_ Kaiba – he just wishes he – anyone – could actually break him down without _breaking_ him.

_Denn nichts bricht den Kreislauf außer Aufgeben._

"Then why don't you let go?" Rishid finally asks, when he has rambled about how annoying Kaiba is and how he treats him and how he hates it for half an hour at least.

Jounouchi stares at him, because, what sort of an advice is that?

"Wouldn't that be giving up!?"

"Sometimes, letting go takes more courage than anything else..."

Jounouchi isn't really very good at guessing people's feelings, but he can tell what Rishid is thinking about, because, does he ever think about anyone else?

In his last duel, Malik forfeited to Yugi, and it was his greatest victory. Jounouchi understands that, of course, be he doesn't see how it's applicable to his duels against Kaiba.

He thinks that this is something Rishid doesn't quite understand, that it's important not to give up, to always try again, to challenge the opponent again, and with ambition but without hatred.

Kaiba himself does, in a way, until he's just really sadistic and easily amused. Because he doesn't refuse his challenges, even though he keeps telling him how much of a waste of his time those duels are. Sure, sometimes it takes some taunting – he's not _begging_ for duels, no matter what Otogi says! – and once or twice, he suspect, some extra persuasion from Yugi, but in the end, Kaiba doesn't refuse to fight him.

This is something he doesn't trust Rishid with, because Rishid has weird views about giving up to someone...

_Versagen zu Schuld für Versagen und neue Schuld..._

He clenches his fingers so tightly around the shaft of the knife that it hurts.

But he feels nothing. His hate makes him numb to everything else.

Never before has he felt such hatred; never before has he known an emotion so overpowering and strong and horrible, so that there is no other issue but a murder!...

From the very first day, he knew; when he had begun to hope, timidly hope that maybe, maybe one day he would be adopted by them, that maybe the one he doesn't dare call "father" even in thought would accept him as his son, something for which he would pay any price – _he_ had come, and taken away everything from him. His mother had died. His father had forsaken him for good.

But until that day, he had not truly realised!... It had taken time to understand that it was over, beyond repair, that there was no way back and that, just because he had been born, this boy he considered his brother was taking away everything from him, and that he had no chance to ever be seen as anything but a servant again. Never. From the moment his mother had died, his whole existence was meant to be only to serve this boy.

And so, when realisation had come over him, he had taken this knife in his rage, and he had been determined to kill him.

He raises the knife; he knows how to use one. He will not fail. He's aiming to kill, and his face is contorted in hate.

Malik turns round.

Malik turns round and looks at him, eyes red from tears, fearful and pleading, Malik looks up at him. And then he speaks; speaks, and calls him his brother. Asks him for help; sincerely, hopefully, full of trust. _Because_ he is his brother.

The knife falls to the floor.

And he will never be ride of the guilt from this day; his redemption can never be complete. He will never have paid enough.

He'd never find out if Malik knew that he was about to kill him that day. He was certain that there was no calculation in his gesture that day – after all, this was what made it so powerful.

But if he didn't know, he was still capable to take advantage of it in the fullest; both smart and ruthless enough.

He wasn't being manipulated: he knew what Malik was doing, what he used, and Malik knew that he knew and he –

But there was no way out.

_Freier Fall ab hier_

Jounouchi talks a lot.

He talks so much that he would probably regret it most of the time, if he could remember what he's said. But of course, it's hardly possible to recall everything he's ever said, for exactly that reason, so in the end, it doesn't really matter.

When he comes home, he tells Rishid, who, most of the time is there (because he has arranged it so that he can be, but Jounouchi never stops to think about that, or he would figure out that it's not given or a coincidence, and Anzu would tell him this is the sort of thing that ruined his chances with Mai and possibly girls in general) about his day. About stuff that was annoying at school, or about Yugi, Honda and Anzu, or about how Kaiba is an arrogant jerk and how the fact he owns half of the world is no reason to act as if he owned it as a whole and how Yugi has helped him come up with a great strategy to defeat him next time, which will show him, and so on.

Rishid is a good listener. A perfect, sincere listener, who's silent for most of the time but who's giving fitting two-word remarks at the right moments, proving that he's following and supporting.

Rishid, on the other hand, talks very little, and sometimes it makes things very hard.

Oh, of course, he does talk. Rishid is a very intelligent person, and a very cultivated person as well, so that Jounouchi is sometimes embarrassed by the way someone who has only come to the upper world a few years ago seems to know so much more about it than him, before he forgets about it again (because _he_ knows about the really important things, like duel monsters and pizza and cheap porn stores). He can talk about almost everything, explain everything, and he does it in a patient way, so that Jounouchi doesn't have to make too much of an effort to pretend he's very interested in a particular pyramid text, because when he talks about it, it does sound somewhat interesting, even though it turns out to have nothing to do with the other Yugi or the origin of duel monsters.

But what he hardly does is talking about his own day in anything but a completely impersonal way. Maybe someone else would be able to decipher more about what he's feeling or thinking through it, but Jounouchi prefers to be told things directly.

However he always knows when Rishid has seen Malik. Even before his boyfriend tells him, or even when he doesn't. Usually, it makes him want to kill Malik, but he's quite sure that Rishid wouldn't appreciate that, so he keeps silent about that.

When he has seen Malik – which isn't that often, thankfully, because Malik is occupied in discovering the world – he's absent, almost like a stranger; paradoxically, he talks more then than usual, but he's... not quite there. It's something Jounouchi can't name, and he doesn't really understand it, and that makes him even more annoyed – and, he has to admit, jealous – at Malik, even though he can't even be sure this is his doing. But it certainly is his fault, and that's more than enough, and he has to be angry at _someone_!

He knows that Malik repented. He has managed to defeat his own darkness, he was ready to sacrifice himself for it, and he has finally done his duty as the tomb-keeper, and understood that his belief that the other Yugi was responsible for his father's death just resulted from a little misunderstanding (Jounouchi would have a few words to say to that Shadi guy if he ever showed up again!).

That was great, and he could acknowledge it.

Beside, it was no mystery that Malik had had to go though a lot to get there.

It didn't mean that he couldn't still think that Malik was a bastard.

All right – they'd all forgiven him: but it was so hard not to be all forgiving when surrounded by people like Yugi and his sister, and Mai's trilling presence and the already intriguing feeling he got from Rishid were too distracting to wonder if he was really capable of truly forgiving Malik what he had done.

The truth was, he would have, and he had, sincerely, and it would have been the end of it if it hadn't been for Rishid, and the way his enslavement seemed to go on forever.

Yet, he was civilly welcoming the ancient tomb keeper in his – well, his and Rishid's, but still – apartment. He was being polite. He was doing his best.

Yet Malik scared him. He hated to admit this because he wasn't supposed to be scared – and he wasn't, not of things that were real, not of things he could fight, even if the odds were against him. But everything unreal, ghostly, false, was different.

And this was how Malik scared him; Isis had assured him that since he had broken the power the millennium rod had over him by his own will, it would never work on him again; even less so could Malik reclaim the revolting control over his mind without the object.

But just by looking at him, he could remember the feeling, tugging at his mind, more horrible than anything he had experienced before and after.

That Malik pretended not to know didn't help; maybe, Yugi had reasoned with him the one time he's talked about it with him, he really didn't; or maybe, as Anzu had pointed out, he was still feeling really guilty about it, and trying to avoid the subject.

Which made sense, of course; but Yugi and Anzu hadn't _seen_ Malik, sitting by the kitchen table, managing to look more mighty just... sitting... there than Seto Kaiba would, and yes, he did get why he wasn't being convincing. And he wasn't obsessing over Kaiba. He had duelled him much less often since he met Rishid.

And then, there was the way Malik was treating Rishid.

When he'd first confronted his boyfriend about it, Rishid had come as closest to getting angry as he ever did: he raised his voice a little, and became cold and distant. He had told him to respect his family bounds, and not to meddle in in something that was none of his business, and that it was really sad if he couldn't understand.

Jounouchi had angrily left and spent the night at Yugi's home.

The next day, when they'd both calmed down, Rishid had explained to him that Malik wasn't meaning to be malevolent. He was just used to Rishid always being there for him, doing his every bid, and he needed someone to still take care of him. He had also bought Jounouchi's favourite pizza, and the reconciliation had not been difficult.

And that was where it stopped, for a time, and the thing is: he's not really angry at Rishid, or maybe even at Malik: they just give him that same strong urge to shake them Kaiba sometimes does, when he's not too blinded by annoyance to think about it.

_Verhaltens- und Beziehungsmuster wie in Stein gemeißelt_

Rishid refuses to duel against him; he knows he's being stupid, but it annoys him to no end: Rishid is one of the most skilled duellists he has ever faced; sometimes, he helps him to go through his own strategies, seriously, patiently, competently. But then, he refuses to fight.

He still has his deck; Jounouchi is surprised when he finds out that he has even kept it up to date.

But he's not when he finds out that he has done so because of a casual remark Malik has made once: he might need it again, some day. So Rishid has quietly and loyally followed what is barely a command. It's the sort of thing that makes Jounouchi want to rip up the tomb-keeper's throat.

But he doesn't say anything to Malik, because Rishid wouldn't want him to, but he feels entitled to whine about it to Rishid himself – and then he's off, in frustration, to duel Kaiba, who, no matter what he says, does this for fun as much as Yugi, and then he feels obscurely unfaithful for it.

Sometimes he wants to ask Rishid who he would chose, if he had to, but it's silly and cruel and he's not sure he wants to hear the answer anyway.

Later, he feels petty for it. He should know about repentance and forgiveness: if it hadn't been for Yugi, where would he be? Kaiba should know about repentance and forgiveness: if it hadn't been for Yugi, where would _he_ be?

But Malik should know too: where would he be if it wasn't for Rishid?

_Unentrinnbares Netz aus hauchdünnen Fäden_

Malik is, has always been, powerful and fragile. It was his strength, the burning rage thanks to which he had found the courage – or despair – to escape his prison and reach out for power that had been his downfall; that had overwhelmed him, and menaced to destroy the one he truly was.

It is this contradiction that makes it so hard for his fear for his brother to ever fade, makes him more worried the better off, the freer of past shadows Malik appears.

Maybe it is his invulnerability to this kind of weakness that makes him love Katsuya, this existence of untwisted hope. But Katsuya doesn't seem to realise how much of a strength this is, how demanding it is of him to expect others to be capable of the same.

* * *

German text:

Denn nichts bricht den Kreislauf außer Aufgeben: For nothing breaks the circle but giving up.  
Versagen zu Schuld für Versagen und neue Schuld: Failure to guilt for failure and new guilt.  
Freier Fall ab hier: Free fall from here on.  
Verhaltens- and Beziehungsmuster wie in Stein gemeißelt: Bahavior and relationship patterns like carved in stone.  
Unentrinnbares Netz aus Hauchdünnen Fäden: Inescapable net of thin threads.

Most of this was written at the worse of my depression. It probably shows, though I don't think it's completely negative.  
I apologise for the lack of a conclusion, but they're just... well, right in the middle of weird relationships. Er. Reviews, be they positive or negative, are very much appreciated!


End file.
